Friday, February 15, 2013

Last Blast

The regular waterfowl season ended on January 26th. However, due to massive overpopulation, the season for Snow Geese is extended to mid-March in some regions. The area where we hunt in Delaware has the extended season. Thus, the boys and I are going out on Tuesday 2/19 for a last blast.

Snow geese descend on the Mid-Atlantic Flyway by the tens of thousands. They destroy fields and contribute to massive erosion in the Arctic Circle where they Summer. Their feeding technique pulls vegetation out at the roots and decimates ground cover. Due to lack of predation and breeding characteristics, the population has exploded such that the Fish & Game authorities want these flocks thinned by hunters.

The problem is, they are hard to hunt. To properly set up for Snows ( or sky-carp as my one red-neck buddy calls them) one needs a spread between 400 and 1000 decoys. This can be a mix of flags, full bodies or rags...but it takes a lot of effort to scout where the Snows are feeding at any given time and then move a huge rig of decoys to that spot. For this reason, we are going on a guided hunt with Del-Bay guides. I have shot Snow Geese with them before and they do a great job. As shown by these photos, when conditions are favorable, we do hunt and bag snows at our Club...but in order to insure a high probability of success myself and 4 guys from the Club are going the guided route.

When you get the snows coming in you can shoot almost as fast as you can load and it is a ton of fun and very challenging. You know you are doing your part for the ecosystem to thin the flocks and to add a bonus...a snow goose that gets a trip to the smoker is delicious eating. I am excited to get anther day in the field and hopefully get in a last day of shooting. Once this is done, we have to turn our attention to re-building blinds and maintaining the Club facilities and then fishing until the dove season returns in September.

2 comments:

I've always dreamed of getting into a good snow goose shoot. Many years ago I was fortunate enough to kill a pair out of a group of ten or so snows that were with a group of canadians on one of our local hot spots. Still not as memorably as melting the gun barrel off on a crazy snow goose shoot would be.